This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
Vehicles of transportation are relatively close quarters for co-occupants to share. Spatial boundaries are not a problem, as occupants each have their own seat.
Conventional vehicles do not provide any sound boundaries or barriers, within the vehicle interior, though. When the radio is turned on, the sound is usually delivered to the entire interior, or cabin, and occupants must agree on what is provided, or some must endure what they would prefer not to listen to. When a driver alert is provided from a vehicle system, it is likewise delivered so that it can be readily perceived by all occupants in the cabin.
One approach for limiting effects of all-cabin sound output is to distribute speaker output. Vehicle acoustic settings—balance/fade—can be adjusted toward a side or corner of the vehicle, such as to output the sound mostly to a front/right of the vehicle. However, other occupants can still readily hear the acoustics provided, though they may not want to. Another challenge of this make-shift approach is that only occupants in the front seats can adjust the settings, giving the rear passengers no direct control. Still another shortcoming is that even the targeted listeners—e.g., a rear, right passenger—do not receive quality sound, such as receiving sound mostly through a right ear, versus stereo.
Another approach for limiting effects of all-cabin sound output is for passengers to wear earphones connected to a personal device such as a phone providing music. If all-cabin sound is loud, though, the user will likely still be continuously distracted by the cabin sounds that inevitably make it past the earbuds, even if the background cabin sound is muffled. Also in the earphones case, while the user wants to be insulated from most ambient noise, they would also likely miss audible notifications that they do want to receive. The vehicle may provide, via the conventional vehicle speakers, for instance, a notification for all to hear, such as regarding an adjacent door not being fully closed, or regarding relevant navigation, such as a notification that a route stop particular to the user is being approached, whether delivered by the vehicle, the driver, or another passenger. Earphone users may not hear these announcements, though they would prefer not to miss them.
These challenges are magnified in shared-vehicle scenarios, such as in a taxicab. In some cases, people may not even know each other, or at least are not close family or friends, and they may prefer to listen to different things, and in some cases still hear general cabin notifications.
There is a need for determining from which occupant sound is received to the vehicle. In a bus scenario, or if a parent is driving his kids and their friends in a large van, the driver may have trouble determining straight away who toward the rear said, “I'm feeling sick,” or the like.